better than nothing. But I have rarely seen an omega who enjoyed her knottings as thoroughly as your mate.”
I choked out a sound of protest as blood filled my cheeks, but Modi wrapped his fingers around my chin and pulled my focus back to him. The smolder in his eyes made tendrils of awareness crawl up my spine, the embarrassment of Mimir’s observations fading into the background.
Some three hours later, as I was falling asleep on Grim’s chest, surrounded by my four other, sated mates, I had the thought that maybe the prophet hadn’t been entirely wrong.
Twenty-Seven
Annabel
I had expected Hel’s residence to be a dark fortress—some shadowy counterpoint to the gilded halls of Valhalla and guarded by nightmarish creatures.
Instead what we found at the epicenter of the maelstrom of souls was a cauldron the size of a small house, sitting in the middle of a barren field scattered with broken skeletons. There was no sign of life—or unlife, as it were—anywhere, except from the eternal pouring of souls into the cauldron.
“Where is she?” I asked, frowning as we stopped at the edge of the field. “Where is her throne?”
Grim glanced at me—the only acknowledgement he made that I knew of her throne, thanks to his plans for my ascension he had accidentally shared with me while we made love that one time. “She resides inside.”
“Inside?” I asked. “You mean…?”
“Inside the cauldron, yes,” Mimir answered. “She draws her powers from it.”
“Then that is where we too will go,” Modi said. He tightened his grip on the pommel of his sword and stared at the cauldron. “And one way or another, we will convince the Queen of the Dead to release our mate.”
Bones crunched underneath our feet as we made our way across the lifeless field. I hadn’t been able to see how the skeletons lay intermingled in layers upon layers from the edge, but it made for an unsteady surface as we worked our way across it.
My mates, of course, seemed unhindered by the marrow-laden terrain—probably a benefit of being full gods, I thought bitterly as I yet again got my foot stuck in a gap and nearly faceplanted onto a broken femur.
Saga caught me by the neckline of my armor and pulled me back upright. “I wish you would let one of us carry you, sweetling,” he said for the umpteenth time.
“Yes, well, the plan is to intimidate Hel with all my newfound power. I doubt that’ll go particularly well if I have to be carried into her home like an overgrown toddler,” I bit, more irritated with my own inability to find my footing than my mate’s continued desire to baby me at every turn.
“The girl is correct,” Mimir joined in. “She is prophesized to stop the unstoppable. Best she make an entrance worthy of a hero, if you wish for Hel to listen.”
“Hel will listen,” Magni said, a quiet note to his voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “We will make sure of that.”
Mimir rolled his eyes. When they met mine, he muttered, “Alphas.”
I cracked a smile at him. “You spoke the prophecy that included five of them. You could have picked, I don’t know, just one nice, genteel beta god instead.”
Three furious growls echoed from the group of men around me—from Saga, Modi, and Magni. Grim only leveled me with an icy stare. Bjarni pinched my ass—hard.
“I’m kidding. God. Learn to take a joke,” I huffed, though I didn’t hate that they got worked up at the thought of being replaced.
“I simply speak what I see,” Mimir said mildly. “I never pick.”
“You can take your chosen mates up with the Norns later, if you must,” Modi said, and the dark look he gave me before he refocused on the cauldron ahead suggested I better make it abundantly clear later that I was, indeed, kidding, or he’d make sure to remind me why I didn’t want a beta husband. “This is not a social call. There is no time for shenanigans.”
Shenanigans. I bit my lip and shot him a fond look. He might have looked like a hunky twenty-something, but he occasionally acted like an old man. I wouldn’t have been too shocked if he occasionally shook his fist at rambunctious youths ruining his lawn.
Modi, seemingly sensing my gaze on him, shot me a firm look. “Eyes front, Anna. Focus.”
“Yes, Dad,” I sighed, but I did obey. My mate was in commander-mode now, and it was in my best interest